


it's no dream, but it's something

by Yuu_chi



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Light Angst, M/M, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-12 22:39:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7125982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuu_chi/pseuds/Yuu_chi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alexander had never thought having a Soulmate would be an uncomplicated thing, but having Aaron Burr makes it an uphill battle on the best of days. </p><p>It's a good thing, then, that Alexander is very good at fighting uphill battles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's no dream, but it's something

It does not take long for Alexander to know Aaron Burr is his soulmate.

The first time he sees him, Aaron is deep in the papers he’s holding, brow furrowed, gaze lost somewhere in all those words. He’s handsome, nobody had ever told Alexander that, and when Alexander approaches his heart is pounding too loudly in his ears.

He thinks that’s because of how ridiculously and surprisingly attractive Aaron Burr looks in that moment. He is, as he later learns, _wrong_ \- not about Aaron Burr being attractive, as time will teach him Aaron always is, but because his heart had already realized that the half that would make it whole was a mere two feet away.

“Pardon me,” Alexander says, and Aaron looks up swift and sudden, “are you Aaron Burr, sir?”

The quiet that follows Alexander’s words seems to drown out the world. Aaron looks at him like he’s the most terrible thing he’s ever seen.

A moment later Alexander understands why.

“That depends,” Aaron says slowly, and Alexander’s heart trips to a stop, “who’s asking?”

 _Oh_ , Alexander thinks, _oh._

The words that are etched into the skin of thigh burn like somebody has struck him with a match. For the first time in nineteen years of life Alexander finds that he cannot think of a single thing to say.

His heart is so loud and the world around him suddenly so dim. Aaron Burr looks good in purple.

Aaron Burr is _his_.

Oh _._

_Oh._

“I think,” Aaron says quietly into the fraught space between them, “that I should buy you a drink.”

.

The pub Aaron takes him to is both loud and small. They have a corner table to themselves and nurse drinks that go sweaty in their palms. Alexander sits close enough for his thigh to slide against Aaron’s, and the warmth of it is illicit and exhilarating.

Alexander is no blushing virgin, but just the feel or Aaron close enough to touch makes his skin hot.

“I don’t know what you approached me for,” Aaron says quietly, head bent so that Alexander’s hair might brush at his collar, “but I think it would be wise if you did not approach me again.”

It should not hurt because it is the Sensible Thing To Do, but the sudden pain that shoots through Alexander’s heart is enough to floor him. Beside him Aaron stiffens and a sharp hiss startles free from between his teeth.

Alexander has heard of this, a heart fighting to keep itself whole, but he’d never anticipated for the pain of separation to feel like... _this_.

Aaron’s knuckles are going white on the tabletop, from stress maybe, from the pain definitely, and Alexander settles the palm of his right hand over the back of Aaron’s left. The white-hot feeling in his blood lessens immediately, and he breathes out a sigh without thought.

Beneath his hand Aaron tenses, but it eases the ache so instantly, so obviously, that he relaxes after only a second.

They are as quiet as their breath suddenly seems loud. The pub around them is raucous, and Alexander allows himself relief at the way it offers them a background anonymity so easily.

“I don’t know if I can,” Alexander says honestly. “Not if doing so will make it always feel like… _that._ ”

Aaron’s lips thin. Alexander tries not to become distracted by them, by how much he’d very much like to trace them out with his thumb.

“Think of the future,” Aaron says to him, “and the fact that there is none for men who are bonded to men.”

“There can be,” Alexander insists, but it is weak. He has long since acknowledged the quiet part of himself that knew his eyes and his daydreams did not always limit themselves to women, but the world is not so open nor so kind. Aaron’s hand beneath his is trembling even as Aaron looks perfectly poised. Quietly, Alexander says, “nobody needs to know.”

(he wonders silently in the crowded jumble of his mind how many other men had said those words - how many other men had found the proof of their … _whatever,_ hewn into their skin for all of the world to see.)

“It’s a bad idea,” Aaron says firmly.

Alexander notices, however, that he does not say _no_.

In their little corner they are all but invisible and Alexander takes care to keep his back to the room as he reaches with his free hand to tilt Aaron’s chin upwards. Aaron’s breath stops for a moment, the corners of his eyes tight. He does not, Alexander notices once more, say _no_.

If Alexander were a better men he wouldn’t push. He would accept the facts of the world as easily as Aaron had. He’d leave Aaron with nothing but those first few words on his skin and they would go on to live their lives with a polite and proper distance between them.

Alexander is not a good man. He’s wanted Aaron Burr since the second he’d set his eyes on him. Has wanted his Soulmate, the actuality of those beautiful words people told him he could speak, since he was old enough to understand the concept.

His thumb brushes at the underside of Aaron’s jaw. “It can just be between us,” he whispers. “Just us.”

The war that rages on Aaron’s face is the most open Alexander will ever see him. He teeters one way, then the other. His indecision is clear and almost painful to watch.

 _Let him make his choice_ , Alexander thinks, _don’t push him towards something he will regret_.

Even as he thinks this though, Alexander finds he cannot.

“Aaron,” he says, “ _please_.”

Aaron’s eyes drift closed. His face scrunches up into a truly pained grimace. And then it relaxes. Slowly, the hand beneath Alexander’s turns over, his fingers wrapping around to rest on the back of Alexander’s hand.

The touch is almost enough to stop Alexander’s heart. He’s never felt so giddy in all his life. A whisper of something painful hisses through whatever it is that’s connecting them now, and Alexander can taste Aaron’s regret on his tongue.

He hopes, then, that Aaron can taste the awed happiness on his own - and then he leans forwards, back still to the room, to make sure he can.

.

“Hamilton,” Washington says as Alexander steps into his tent. “Come in.”

Aaron’s frisson of surprise at seeing him bounces through to Alexander, and Alexander tries to tamp down on the rising dread in his stomach. Not at seeing Aaron, for that would never be anything but a happiness to him, but at the notion of what is to come.

“You asked to see me, sir?” Alexander says, back straight even as his eyes wander to Aaron.

“Yes,” Washington says, then waves a hand in Aaron’s vague direction. “Have you met Burr?”

_Have you met Burr?_

It shouldn’t be as funny to Alexander as it is, but it borders on the hysterical. He struggles to keep that from showing on his face, but some of it works its way back to Aaron because the look he shoots him is almost poisonous. “Yes, sir,” Alexander says, and then, because he cannot help himself, “we keep meeting.”

Aaron’s disapproval is palpable. It is a feeling Alexander is intimately aware of by now and he brushes it aside thoughtlessly.

Aaron steps forward, opens his mouth to say something, but Washington barely looks up from his papers as he dismisses him with a curt, “Burr, close the door on your way out.”

Alexander cannot help but wince. Aaron’s mouth snaps shut and he turns on his heels. He does not look at Alexander as he passes him by, but the tension that crackles between them is like lightening.

Aaron does not slam the door, because he would never be so disrespectful or uncouth, but the dead silence in Alexander’s head feels twice as bad.

.

Alexander arrives back at his tent hours later, tired, sore and with a hand so cramped from writing that he would not say no to a bowl of ice to rest it in. He pushes aside the tent hangings to find Aaron sitting at the makeshift desk that takes up half of the floorspace. It’s nothing more than a stack of empty crates littered with parchment and quills, but Alexander has made it his as much as he can.

Like this though, with Alexander hovering uncertainly in the doorway and Aaron flicking idly through his papers, it feels more Aaron’s than it ever did his.

His head is still quiet. He can feel Aaron, but it’s like feeling him through a chilled lake. Alexander can shout at it all he wants, but nothing is coming through to him. It annoys him when Aaron does this, because it’s a trick that Alexander himself has never perfected.

“Aaron,” Alexander says, uncertainly. “You are… here. In my tent.”

Aaron looks up, a brow cocked and one of Alexander’s unfinished letters in his hand. “Would you rather I be gone?”

“No, _no_ ,” Alexander says in a rush. He hesitates a moment longer before stepping into the tent and letting the hangings fall closed behind him. “I only meant I was surprised. You know if I could have it my way, I’d never have you anywhere else.”

Aaron’s mouth only barely twitches at the flattery and his expression looks empty.

He’s upset then. Okay. Alexander had thought he would be. He can work around this.

“You should rest. I know you’ve been pushed thin lately. Laurens is out on a mission and not due back for a few days, so you could even rest here, if you - what are you doing?” Alexander says, cutting himself off in confusion as he watches Aaron start to methodically strip out of his jacket, unbuttoning his shirt with careful fingers.

“What does it look like I’m doing, Alexander?” Aaron says flatly as he finishes the last button. He gets to his feet, rolling his sleeves back.

Like this Alexander can see _Pardon me, are you Aaron Burr, sir?_ scrawled in his scrappy handwriting along the flex of Aaron’s arm. It’s very distracting, it always has been. Aaron _knows_ it is.

“If I knew I wouldn’t waste my words on asking,” Alexander says tensely as Aaron swaggers forward, frowning as Aaron reaches up to push at his coat until Alexander allows it to shrug free from his shoulders and drop to the floor. Without missing a beat Aaron starts on his buttons, too.

“I am undressing myself,” Aaron says blandly. “And I am undressing you. I want to fuck. I’d have thought with your stunning mind, you’d have figured it out yourself, Alexander.”

Alexander reaches up to catch Aaron’s hands. The bond between them is still as cool and distant as ice. “Aaron -.”

Aaron twists out of his grip and takes ahold of Alexander’s shirt, jerking him forwards into a kiss that is as violent as it is sudden. There is no affection in the way Aaron pries open his mouth, just an irritated sort of need.

It’s Aaron though, and Alexander finds himself responding to it on instinct alone, hands to Aaron’s waist and staggering backwards as Aaron pushes him to his desk. His back hits it, jolting the crates slightly off kilter and knocking an inkpot clean to the floor.

“Aaron,” Alexander says against his lips when Aaron pulls back to fumble with his belt. He doesn’t try and stop him this time, still slightly dazed and undeniably a little aroused. “Is this really what you want right now?”

Aaron stills for a second, hands caught on Alexander’s belt and face tilted out of sight. Slowly, Alexander reaches down to lift his face up, fingers soft as they smooth down his cheeks. Aaron is like stone beneath his touch.

“And if it is?” Aaron asks, voice hard. “Will you give me this?”

 _I’d give you the world if I thought you’d accept a single thing from me_ , Alexander thinks but does not say.

He settles his hands back down on Aaron’s shoulders, impersonal and a little tight in his grip, like how he knows Aaron will want it. “You know I will,” he says.

Aaron smiles then, but it has more teeth to it than it does lips. He sinks down between Alexander’s legs, but not before reaching up to push against his chest. Alexander takes the hint and leans backwards, staring at the canvas ceiling as he feels Aaron unbuckle his pants.

It’s rough, even dirtier than it has been since the war had sent them to these destitute battlefields, and Aaron seems intent on taking Alexander apart as thoroughly and as uncompromisingly as possible.

He does not let Alexander touch him, however, and Alexander can do nothing but clench his hands so tight at the edges of the crate he’s sitting on that he fears his knuckles might pop free from his skin.

He makes no effort to control his thoughts. And as the long minutes stretch and stretch and pile upon each other they become frantic, desperate things. A little filthy, but a lot more adoring. He does not know how much of it makes its way back to Aaron, but Alexander will hear his breath catch and small noises slip free from him every now and again that may not be entirely due to his going down on Alexander.

“Aaron,” he gasps, loses track of what he was going to add to that, and says again, “ _Aaron._ ”

One of Aaron’s hands slides up his leg to his thigh, pressing down heavily on the spot where his hand writing stains Alexander’s skin.

“Oh, _shit_ ,” Alexander whimpers, and he comes almost painfully, more aware of where Aaron’s hand sits on his thigh then he is of the warmth of his mouth at his cock.

(and maybe it’s the way Aaron has worked himself to the edge without even a touch, or the way his fingers press at his mark on Alexander’s skin, but finally, finally the dam he’s erected between their minds springs a leak.

It’s not a lot, but it’s also too much, and Alexander’s head is all snow-blanketed silence; but he catches a burst of painful need, a simmering hot anger, and a handful of words as they try to slither on by;

_You take and you take and you take_

and

_Will this ever be enough?)_

.

The Schuyler sisters are lovely and beautiful.

Alexander has eyes, he can appreciate that. Before Aaron he thinks he may have tried his hardest to collect each and every one of them to keep by his side. It is not necessarily a pleasant thought, but it is true one.

This is _not_ Before Aaron however. This is During - and Alexander prays he will never reach an After.

Which is why, when Aaron suggests in that annoyingly subtle way he has, that Alexander should try do exactly that, he becomes unsurprisingly furious.

The Winter’s Ball is loud but is not loud in the same way the pub was all those years ago. Alexander cannot raise his voice without causing a scene, cannot do anything but stare at Aaron like he’s slapped him clean across the face.

Aaron stares back placidly and doesn’t even blink. That too is infuriating, this tendency of his to make Alexander feel like he’s an unreasonable five year old.

“You cannot be serious,” Alexander says tightly. “Or perhaps I have not heard you correctly.”

Aaron says, “Eliza has been staring desperately at you for much of the evening. Her father is a politician. Quite wealthy, too.”

“Yes,” Alexander hisses. “I am aware. And you’d have me, what? Whisk her off her feet and off to an altar?”

“Well,” Aaron says mildly, turning away from Alexander so he can place his empty champagne glass on the tray of a passing waiter. “I would suggest you get to know the lady before you break out the flowers and rings.”

The stem of Alexander’s glass feels dangerously close to cracking in his grip. “ _Aaron_ -,” he starts to say, only to remember where they are and cut himself off. He tries again, lower, “ _Burr_ , perhaps we could talk about this later. In private.”

Aaron doesn’t bat an eye. “Later will be _too_ late. It is now that we are in a position where you might ask her to a dance.”

Alexander stares at him, furious and helpless. Aaron is as manipulative as he is intelligent, and like this he is protected by the ball, knows that Alexander cannot turn this into an argument without damaging both of their reputation.

(and Alexander _would_ if he thought it would just be him that would cop the fallout of it - but it is _not_ just him, and he would never play those sorts of games with Aaron’s reputation.

and Aaron _knows_ it - as he knows all things Alexander these days.)

Alexander gulps down the rest of his champagne and turns around to deposit it in the middle of the buffet table. It is unbearably rude but he gets nothing more than a disapproving look from a passing soldier. He turns back to Aaron and gives him the most frostily polite smile he has and says, “I am sorry to say Lieutenant Colonel Burr; you may not have been aware, but I’m actually rather taken with my current lover. Now, if you excuse me…”

Alexander turns and goes. He may not be able to leave the ball without drawing attention to himself, but there is a perfectly suitable balcony out the back door that is calling him.

As he crosses the room he sees Angelica Schuyler heading towards him.

She’s a fierce woman, beautiful and determined. Several paces behind her is Eliza, nervously wringing her hands together. Beautiful also. Any man would be lucky to have them.

Alexander does an about face, turns around, and disappears into the throng of the crowd. It takes him twice as long to go to the balcony this way, but at least he doesn’t get ambushed.

It’s hot outside, and once he’s out of the crowd Alexander lets out a breath and loosens his tight collar, pushing up his sleeves and savouring the emptiness of the night air. His fingers ache from where he’d been squeezing his glass and he flexes them almost absently.

It is not that he doesn’t understand where Aaron is coming from when he does these things, exactly, but that he can’t relate to them.

Yes, a marriage would be beneficial in too many ways to list. It would keep their close friendship free from suspicions. It would elevate Alexander’s status for sure. He’d have money, finally, political backing. A home to go back to after the war.

But it would also mean sharing a part of himself that was already given to somebody else, that no longer existed outside of Aaron Burr.

Alexander knows, intellectually, that some people do not marry their Soulmates for one reason or another. People like him, for instance, never would. People who never find them, or find them too late.

But Alexander is not good at things like intellectual reasoning. He has Aaron, and he isn’t planning on compromising that for any of the easier options that come along.

The door beside him creaks open and Alexander jumps, hoping against hope for one moment that perhaps Aaron has come after him, because even the inevitable argument was more favourable to icy distance, but it is long hair and a plump face that peer through the doorway instead.

“Oh!” Gasps Eliza, red settling high in her cheeks as she sees Alexander. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware anybody was out here."

Alexander gives her a strained smile and hopes she’s telling the truth. “It’s perfectly fine, you can join me if you wish.”

She hesitates for a moment, glancing back towards the room, and Alexander winces a little as he realizes the repercussion of a lone man extending that invitation to a lone woman on the private outskirts of a party where nobody can see them.

After a moment of deliberation, however, Eliza steps outside and the door closes behind her.

“I needed quiet for a moment,” she says by way of explanation.

Alexander offers her a smile that is only slightly tense. “Understandable.”

They lapse into quiet. It’s terribly awkward. Alexander cannot help but be amused that Aaron had thought he stood a chance of wooing this girl into some kind of marriage built on lies.

“If you don’t mind me saying,” Eliza says, startling him, “you seem… uncomfortable, suddenly.”

“No,” Alexander says instantly, even though he really is. “It’s - well, it’s nothing to do with you.” Which is mostly true.

Eliza studies the deck they’re standing on intently. The tips of her ears are red. It’s quite cute, really. Alexander has never felt less attracted to somebody this beautiful in all his life. Another side effect of Aaron, he supposes, and the uncomfortable ideas he’d tried to put in Alexander’s head.

“Angelica - that is, my sister - felt like you may have been deliberately avoiding us inside,” Eliza says.

Alexander frowns, but he’s tired and irritable and would very much like to have left half an hour ago before Aaron had soured the night irrevocably. “I apologize if I came off as rude. I was in need of - fresh air.”

Eliza seems to accept that with the politeness of somebody who knows there’s more to the story but is unwilling to push. “I’ve heard your name mentioned before. You’re Alexander Hamilton, yes?”

“I could say the same for you, Miss Schuyler ,” Alexander says with a wane smile.

Eliza looks up from the ground, studies him quietly for a moment. “You are… different than I anticipated.”

Alexander raises a brow. “In that case, I am very sorry to disappoint you. I’m afraid I’m not at my best tonight, you must forgive me.”

She laught at that. It’s a delicate lady-like laugh, but also genuine at the edges. She’s still a little red but she seems less flustered and more comfortable than before. “I didn’t mean offense. I’m just - and I hope you’ll pardon how this may sound - used to men being in more of a state over my surname.”

“So you’re saying my clear lack of romantic intention has put you at ease, then?” Alexander says, wondering if he might be insulted by that.

“In a word, perhaps,” she says, although her smile is a little more disappointed this time, and she adds, a little teasingly, a little gently, “there is no interest at all, then?”

Alexander considers her for a moment. She’s not as shy as he might have thought before, once stripped of any illusion of the possibility of attraction. He will not lie and say that he’d rather be standing here with her then alone or back with Aaron, but he can see a mind he’d be quite pleased to know as a friend. He can see, even, how in another life he may have allowed her sister to matchmake them.

He could tell her _no,_ a gentle let down, and a self disparaging remark about his own prospects. Instead Alexander says, with no small dose of exhausted humour, “I’m afraid there is already a person to whom my interest belongs, and to whom it has belonged since before I even had the privilege to meet them.”

Whatever offence may have been present is lost instantly in that confession and Eliza’s eyes widen as her hand flutters to her mouth. “Oh, I’m so sorry. You’ve your Soulmate already?  And _oh_ , I approached you out here all by myself - this must look terrible, I can -.”

“Miss Schuyler,” Alexander says, “It’s alright. It’s…” He pauses for a second to think over his words. “It’s not knowledge I would like to be shared.”

“Of course,” Eliza agrees, readily if curiously, and then, with a hesitant sort of interest, “is she…” she trails off quickly, frowning like she can’t think of a way to phrase whatever question she has.

Alexander takes pity on her. “It’s something of a complicated situation, I’m afraid. For the time being, it’s best kept between the two of us.”

“Of course,” Eliza says again, and this time without missing a single beat she adds, “it’s a secret safe with me.”

Strangely Alexander does not doubt it. He hopes dearly that whatever man Eliza takes as her husband deserves even a half of her selfless kindness, and he knows that man would never be him.

He thinks of Aaron’s warm skin, the taste of his lips, the tired crinkles at his eyes and the confused, helpless way he stares at Alexander some days like he’s unsure how he let himself get caught in such a pointless future.

He thinks, mostly, of how he never plans to be the one to let Aaron go - that if Aaron wants to leave, he will have to be the one do it himself.

“It has been a pleasure talking with you,” Alexander says, and Eliza smiles hesitantly up at him.

“And you,” she says. She touches her fingertips lightly to the back of his hand, but it’s brief, more friendly than it is intimate. Then she adds, “my sister was roving the edges of the hall, you’d be better to cut through the middle.”

Alexander laughs, loud and startled.

“Goodbye, Miss Schuyler,” he says.

“Goodbye, Alexander,” she smiles.

She stays outside, lingering over the railing at the decking, and Alexander turns to the door, slightly ajar from where Eliza left it, and he pushes it open and steps inside. It’s only after he’s already letting it swing closed behind him that he realizes as he stepped in somebody had stepped back.

Aaron stands awkwardly two feet away, frozen like he’d wanted to turn and walk away but had left it too late. The startled expression is a good look for a man who very rarely wears any kind of emotion where people may see it.

It’s gone quickly, wiped away for a detached friendliness. “Hamilton,” he says, and Alexander has always hated the sound of his surname from Aaron’s lips.

“Burr,” he says in return and nothing else.

Aaron hesitates, unused to, perhaps, Alexander giving him one word and no more. Unused to Alexander not providing him with an out for the repercussions of his actions.

“I see,” he says carefully after a pregnant pause, “that you were having quite the lively conversation with one of the Schuyler sisters.”

Alexander raises his eyebrows, curious of how long Aaron had been watching, what he had heard. Not enough, evidently. Not clearly. Not the part where Alexander had turned Eliza down because there was only room enough in his life for one person and it was quite taken already.

Alexander hopes they made a pretty picture out there, he and Eliza, that Aaron had felt the genuine amusement they had shared.

“She was a lively person,” he says, cheerfully, and then, because he knows it will hurt Aaron, “you were right, I’d be quite lucky to have her as my wife.”

Aaron looks at him blankly, face frozen somewhere between a strained smile and perfect nothingness. “I - yes,” he says.

A hurt that does not belong to Alexander shivers at the back of his mind, and he relishes it. _Good_ , he thinks, with a vindictiveness that is almost alarming. _It is easier to suggest we end this than it is to see it happening_.

And: _it does you no harm, Aaron Burr, to feel exactly what I do the hundred and one times you suggest this to me._

“I think I’ve had enough of this ball for tonight,” Alexander says, almost conversationally, as Aaron continues to stare at him with that peculiar, pained blankness. “What do you say we end the night here?”

Aaron’s jaw moves silently. “Yes,” he says quietly, “let’s. Please.”

.

In a small room they rent across town from the ball, they undress each other like men trying to outrun hell. Clothes stick where the night has given them sweat, and Aaron’s usually steady fingers fumble once on Alexander’s buttons, twice, three times; until Alexander catches his wrists and kisses along his knuckles.

They’re still wearing their boots, and the way they’re tangled on the bed is not comfortable, strictly speaking. There’s an edged desperation in Aaron’s eyes that Alexander does not often get to see, and it socks him the stomach to realize that _he_ put it there.

Ever since they’d met Aaron has been the flight risk. There barely went by a day where Alexander couldn’t see him weighing up the pros and cons of this relationship. He’d kept his escape routes open from the start, had refused to let Alexander settle them into a forever sort of deal.

And Alexander had let him - had been, for perhaps the first time in his life, the stabilizing presence. He’d made no secret that he only ever wanted to be at Aaron’s side. There had never been a risk that he’d be the one to up and go.

But tonight - tonight Alexander had turned the tables.

And it had _scared_ Aaron.

 _Good,_ Alexander thinks again, a little deliriously now, because it would never be a threat he could carry through on, but he was only human. _Good._

“Hey,” he says, reaches up to smooth a hand down Aaron’s cheek. He offers him a smile. “I didn’t bring an extra shirt with me, Burr, you’d do well to spare my buttons a night on the floor.”

“Don’t call me that,” Aaron snaps, and then winces at his own loss of control.

“You dislike it when I call you by your surname when we’re alone?” Alexander says without missing a beat. “Do you think, perhaps, that I may dislike it when you insist on flaunting women at me like I’d ever have any real interest in them?”

Aaron’s mouth goes white with how tight his lips press together and goes to push himself upright and off Alexander, shirt hanging half off his shoulders, but Alexander tightens his grip on his wrists and does not let him. “ _Alexander_ -.”

“Don’t tell me to marry a woman to better my future and then get upset with me when you think I am,” Alexander hisses, “you can’t have it both ways.”

“If you want to marry, I’d never -.”

“I don’t want to marry!” Alexander snaps, finally letting go of Aaron so he can haul himself upright. Aaron winces at the loudness of his tone, leans back a little. “I’ve never wanted to marry. Stop making this about me, when -.” Alexander breaks off, let’s out a huff and grinds the heels of his palm into his eyes.

Aaron touches his elbow, feather light, and Alexander moves his hands away to stare at him.

He’s disheveled, down to his undershirt and only barely, Alexander’s words on his arm clear as day. He looks gorgeous, and it’s true that Alexander is more than a little biased, but he’ll be damned if he ever lets this man go.

“Aaron,” he says, and his voice only breaks a little, “ _please_.”

Aaron studies him for a second, dark eyes wandering and one hand still rested on Alexander’s elbow. The other is at his thigh, and although he’s still wearing pants Alexander swears he almost feels the burn of Aaron’s palm through them.

“Okay,” Aaron says, in the soft voice he only uses in their most private moments. He squeezes Alexander’s thigh, leans forward to press his lips in the spot beneath Alexander’s ears, lingering. “Okay.”

And it’s not the promise of an eternal uninterrupted future but from Aaron it is enough.

(and months ago now, Aaron down between his legs, his thoughts fraying " _will this ever be enough_ ” loud and clear in the haunted bond between them.)

It is _enough_.

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> this is not the fic i have spent the past couple of days working on, because i wanted to write and post a short thing just to feel a part of the fandom, but then things spiraled and this happened. i might came back to this universe at some point and turn this into a series, but for now back to my big project i go.


End file.
